GEL2007 - Day 2 - Session 1

Mark Hurst is creating a community of folks interested in “good experience”. This year’s theme was “food and spirit”. He talked of his visit to Napa Valley and Frog’s Leap Winery. “… some spirit infuses the goodness of the outcome…” Danny Meyer opened the Friday session talking about hospitality and how he has organically grown his business from a single restaurant to multiple restaurants in NYC. He said we are all looking to replicate the experience of when we were just born; we received eye contact, we were acknowledged, we were hugged and we received some great food. Chris Jordan is now an artist but did spend time in the corporate arena as a lawyer. He is looking to present data on some of our significant problems in a way that makes the data become emotionally engaging. Data and numbers by and large are rather dry. His art starts with a picture and then he uses PhotoShop to multiply the images to create the numerical impact. Peter Skillman is the ‘usability guy’ for Palm. He talked about learning to fail, early, and often, ultimately to create a better experience. He described a project he has taken to multiple groups from kindergartners to business school candidates. The group is given a small set of materials, some tape, dry spaghetti, a marshmallow, etc. The objective is to create the tallest structure that will support the marshmallow. The kindergartners have the record for the tallest structure and generally will create a structure more than one inch taller than the business school candidates. How do they do this? Less fear. More openness to trying something. Andrew writes songs and maintains the web site “songs to wear pants to”. He shared a dozen songs or so specifically generated from user requests. He has over 300 currently on the web site.